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Hurricane Harvey Claims Numerous Lives, Numbers to Rise

The rescue teams are being overwhelmed by thousands of calls during one of the heaviest and record breaking rainfall in US history. The teams had little time to find any potential victims during the rainfall and the number of people dying could increase as there seems to be no sign of the rainfall coming to a halt anytime soon.

After three days of the storm, officials have confirmed three deaths that includes a woman who was killed on Monday after the storm dislodged an oak tree that fell onto her trailer home in Porter. There were several other missing reports that could take the count of deaths to even more. Houston police chief, Art Acevedo told journalists that during such events, the death toll goes up as seen in the past years and that he was worried about the number of bodies that they would find once all this is over.

There was a claim by a woman on Monday that sex members of her family that included four children died after their van sank in East Houston. The claim was, however, not confirmed by the officials. Another spokesperson from a Houston hotel said that one of their employees disappeared while helping other people evacuate from the building after the floodwater around it started to rise. The fourth largest city in the US is totally paralyzed by the hurricane Harvey and the rainfall it is bringing along with it. Even on Tuesday, the rainfall continued and showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Edmond Russo, a deputy district engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, said that the storm was a generation rainfall that can be seen only once in a thousand years. President Donald Trump would be visiting Corpus Christi, TX and Austin, TX on Tuesday. He would be accompanied by first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Harvey has also impacted a large part of south-western Louisiana and areas around Lake Charles where emergency crews are rescuing residents from their homes that are submerged.

By Thursday, the storm is expected to reach Mississippi and New Orleans that was last affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Rescuers in Houston have already rescued more than 3,000 people on Tuesday. The Coast Guard are also doing their bit and are transferring people by boat and air to shelters in other cities. The rescue team is getting around 1,000 calls per hour. People are volunteering in the rescue mission that started on Sunday and everyone is giving their best to rescue as many people as they can if they have the required tools.